


And I Can See Our Days Are Becoming Nights

by indevan



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, First Kiss, Fluff, Gay Character, Getting Together, M/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 18:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11131965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Figuring out his feelings for Goten was, “Oh, of course” but he kept it to himself.  He wanted to see the end of the movie.  He wanted to see if he’d say yes, if they’d kiss in the rain or something similarly cheesy





	And I Can See Our Days Are Becoming Nights

**Author's Note:**

> an alternate POV retelling of [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10883013). also like that fic, the title comes from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfTr0555Gok)

When he was little, Trunks liked going up the mountain to look at the stars.  In West City, there was a parody of the night sky.  The lights and pollution made it a blue-brown haze.  He would lie in his backyard and look up at the buzzing skyline and think about the vastness beyond it.  On the mountain, when he would visit Goten, he could maybe believe everything out there.  The sky was black as ink with edges of blue and the stars were sparkling diamonds.  The grass was softer there, too, not like the prickly grass at home.

On that dew-kissed, velvet soft grass, he would lie with Goten and his brother and listen to Gohan talk about the stars.  He would point out constellations and stars and talk about traveling to other planets.  He had seen so much and Trunks thought he was wickedly cool.  If he had a brother, he’d want him to be like Gohan.

He would tell his mom, “I want a big brother” and she’d say, “No, you don’t.  Being the youngest is no fun,” which he knew was a lie because his mom was the youngest and clearly the favored child.  So there he was: an only child.  It had its perks.  He wanted for nothing.  Any desire (other than an older sibling) he conjured up in his mind was granted.

The kids at school knew and they were jealous.  He liked their envy--it was their scrutiny that threw him off.  Trunks knew he was different his whole life.  Special, his father said, for being part Saiyan.  Not that he could talk about it.  Once someone had asked him what his dad did and if it was true that he was a famous baseball player.  He’d said that his dad was a prince and they’d laughed at him.

It went beyond that, though.  He had known it but had no word for it until he was older.  When the boys around him started talking about the girls they liked.  Trunks never said anything because all his crushes were on boys.

He told Goten first, of course.  Goten was the one who was always there for him.  He got him better than anyone.  When he told him, they were watching the stars.  Gohan wasn’t there; he had his family and his studies, and it was just the two of them.  He said the words he’d been stewing on and--that was it.  It was spoken and accepted and Goten grinned at him in that sweet way of his and his stomach dipped.

His mom reacted with unbidden enthusiasm.  That wasn’t a surprise.  She was always supportive in anything he wanted.  If he told her he wanted to become a dancer, she would hire the best teacher in the world to train him.  His father was tougher.  He had no idea how he felt until a company party.  His mother talked him up, saying how Trunks had inherited her genius and that he was going to work for Capsule Corps and some board member pointed out how he partied too much.  As if drinking and smoking weed were huge crimes.  Then he said something else.  Trunks hadn’t heard it, not quite, but his father had and he threw him through the wall.

So they didn’t care if he brought guys home so long as he was safe.  He avoided it when he could, or made sure Goten was there.  The only time he took guys to his house was to break up with them.  Trunks never dumped anyone and he made sure of it.  When he wanted to end it, he’d bring the guy to meet his parents.  The combined intensity of their personalities (and the fact that his father was convinced that no one was good enough for him) made guys run for the hills.  At best, they would stop answering calls.  At worst, they’d break up with him then and there.  It was painless and kept Trunks from developing a worse reputation than he already had.

“That’s cold,” Goten said once and maybe he was right.

Not that  _ he’d _ ever be intimidated by them or break up with them.  The first time Trunks thought that, that Goten would never fall for that, threw him for a loop.  What did it  _ mean? _

He’s a fast learner but it took him until the February before he graduated to figure it out.  It was like figuring out the plot twist in a movie but still not knowing how it would end.  Figuring out his feelings for Goten was, “Oh, of course” but he kept it to himself.  He wanted to see the end of the movie.  He wanted to see if he’d say yes, if they’d kiss in the rain or something similarly cheesy.

Or he’d say no and everything would change.  It was a few years after his own coming out that Goten told him he was bi, but did that matter?  He wouldn’t automatically have feelings for him.  Life wasn’t that easy.  Love wasn’t that easy.  Maybe for people like Gohan and Videl it was that simple but Trunks knew the real world.  The real world was him potentially ruining his relationship with his best friend.

So he keeps it to himself.  He graduates and summer comes and the future stretches out, big and mysterious, and he wonders if he should tell him before he leaves.

\--

It’s always easy to find Goten.  He’s a creature of habit and that habit is his rock.  It looks smaller now and while he’s sure years of water erosion have made it  _ somewhat _ smaller, most of its diminished appearance is psychosomatic.  Or, rather, he and Goten have simply gotten  _ bigger. _  The rock is another signifier of the passage of time.

It’s an alright rock, he figures.  Big and flat and, when they were little, big enough to hold both of them.  Now they’d have to crush together to fit.  It makes him nostalgic even though it was never  _ his _ rock.

He’s seeking Goten out to convince him to go to the party.  There’s always a party but this is more true in the summer.  Trunks gets an invite because he’s rich.  Kids still think he’s weird but in high school his weirdness garnered a sort of irony that appealed to his peers.  He doesn’t get it.  In fact, he hates most of his classmates.  They’re boring.  He thinks it’s a form of ennui.  It isn’t  _ their _ fault that the eventfulness of his youth made for boring, peaceful teen years.  But in the end, he doesn’t suppose that it matters.  A party’s a party and Trunks loves a good party.

The river is wide and almost still as he lazily flies over to it, following Goten’s ki.  The way the sunlight reflects off of the water reminds him of when he first realized the depth of his feelings, when he realized he was in love with his best friend.

They’d been borrowing some rich guy’s pool.  He came to the city on weekends and left his expansive property empty during the week.  Trunks got off early because he was graduating and he convinced Goten to ditch the rest of the day and come with him.  He watched him pop up from the water and shake the water from his hair.  Droplets dripped pink, green and blue from the shaggiest parts.  Water turned all hair into prisms, he thought, and then another thought creeped in.  How  _ good _ he looked.  The realization came next and it hit him with such normalcy that it almost struck him silent.  He didn’t have time to even dwell on it or, worse, say something, because he was saved by the crunch of gravel under tires.  He pretended to scowl and dragged Goten up and over the fence.  “Asshole!” he yelled. “Don’t you know you’re a weekender?”  In his head, he had thought  _ Thank you, thank you, thank you. _

He finds Goten on his back, eyes closed.  His shirt is rolled up and he can see the way sweat glistens on the segments of his stomach.  He swallows and wonders if Goten got hot recently or he just didn’t notice until now.  He supposes it doesn’t matter.  Trunks drops down on the edge of the river and creeps forward.  He dips his fingers lightly into the cool water and lifts them to drip the water on Goten’s stomach.  The result is instantaneous.  He leaps to his feet and grabs Trunks by the wrist.  He laughs and doesn’t resist the hold.

“I’m not going to that party no matter what you say.”

He smirks and twists his wrist free.  It’s not like Goten was holding him tightly anyway.

“Why not?”

He knows why.  Goten isn’t as into partying as he is and is into spending time with their classmates even less.  Everyone who doesn’t call him a hick outright gapes at the fact that he lives so far away.  He’s treated like an animal in a zoo sometimes worse than Trunks is.

“I’m not going to have fun.”

He’s tempted to pooch Goten’s cheeks between his hands but, somehow, he feels like their usual array of casual touches are off limits now.  He’s not  _ allowed _ to touch Goten in the way he always has because now it’s  _ loaded,  _ now there’s  _ feelings _ and he  _ hates  _ it.  Instead, he just plasters on his usual smirk and shakes his head to flick some hair from his eyes.

“Who says that fun is the only option?”

The way Goten’s face falls lets him know that he’s already won.

\--

At the party, he drinks a concoction that burns down his chest but it makes him feel bold, invincible.  Trunks looks at the couples fooling around around in the pool and wrinkles his nose.  Part of him wanted to go swimming but he doesn’t think so now.  He doesn’t care what chlorine supposedly kills, he isn’t getting in that water.

He and Goten are lying out on pool chaises, too close to these people.  Every now and then, someone streaks by shirtless and holding a squirt gun.  He remembers the swimming instructor his mother brought to teach him to swim and how he told him never to run around a pool.

He turns his head to watch Goten as he drinks his beer.  Watches the way his throat works up and down as he swallows.  He needs to be drunker--no.  He wants to be obliterated, blitzed, completely out of it.

Just like that, his wish is granted, and he doesn’t even need to find the dragonballs.  A smile twitches onto his lips and he tosses back the rest of his drink.  The guy stands on the other side of the pool, taking bites out of him with his eyes.

“I’ll be right back.”

Left there on the chaise, Goten looks like little boy lost.  Like a puppy in the cardboard box when all the others are adopted.  Maybe, maybe he gets some kind of perverse pleasure out of him looking so jealous.  Sometimes he doesn’t know how to categorize his emotions or stop bad ones from intruding.  It could be his upbringing.  Nature and nurture both left him supremely fucked.  He knows he’s loved but by two people with very, very odd ways of expressing themselves.

The guy puts his hands on his waist and rubs his thumbs over his hipbones.  Trunks stares at him and thinks about breaking his fingers but he just smiles slow and easy.

“It’s all I have left,” he says when he hands over the joint. “But I wanted you to have it.”

Blue light from the pool flicks over his earnest face and Trunks smiles at him.  He has no intention of sleeping with him or doing any sort of favor for this but he keeps up the tease to get what he wants.  Wouldn’t his mother be proud?

“Thanks,” he says, making his voice curl around the word, making it sound sincere.

The guy lights it for him and he takes a long drag.  Blows the smoke upwards.  The sober part of him feels bad, using people like this, but he’ll be gone and it doesn’t matter.  None of it matters.

\--

Later, he’s sprawled out on his bed pretending to be asleep.  He wonders if Goten’s still awake but he doubts it.  He’s always slept like the dead.  When they were kids, they tried to dare each other to stay up all night once.  Goten fell asleep within minutes of being in the bed and, bored, Trunks fell asleep soon after.

With the high receding to the back of his brain, he feels bad for playing Mr. Sweet Boy to get what he wants.  It’s not sincere and it’s not him--he doesn’t think so.  Still, being close to Goten like that, blowing the smoke into his mouth, it made him hornier than anything else.  But he can  _ maintain, _ can hold it back.  It’s not fair to Goten or to himself.  He squeezes his eyes shut more and tries to push it back.  This lovesick thing.  Love.  Since The Realization (it bears capitalization in his mind), he’s begun categorizing love into phases, levels.  It’s a fucked up psychological video game that he’s lost the manual to.

Level One: the “I love you” he says to his mother.  Simple, straightforward.  She always has his back and inspires him even when she frustrates him.  Related: the “I love you” he says to his baby sister.

Level Two: the “I love you” he says to his father.  More difficult, with a muddier history.  A few years of being ignored and then  _ something _ changed when he was a kid and things improved gradually to where they are now.  He doesn’t doubt that he’d go to hell for him (considering he once did literally) and is willing to throw homophobes through walls for him.  He doesn’t doubt this one, either.

Levels Three-Nine: Various loves for his friends and acquaintances.  Mwah-mwah love for boys who end up boring him or just aren’t the right one.  Love for beef yakiniku and sweets.  Love for flying, martial arts, fighting.  All said with various degrees of difficulty depending but, in the end, all end up blurring into a very, very dull mid-level crunch.

Level Ten: The love he’s realized for Goten.  The love that can destroy their entire relationship before Trunks fucks off to college and tries to forget about it and him.  Tries, he thinks, because he knows it’s not actually possible.  The “I love you” he says when Goten agrees to go along with whatever scheme he’s come up with.  The “I love you” when he does something stupidly endearing.  It’s the most dangerous level and one he’s sure he’ll never pass.

Unplug the video game and try to shut his brain off--that’s what he’s trying to do.  He hears the sheets on the made up bed shift and wonders if Goten’s actually asleep.  He perishes the thought and squeezes his eyes shut more.

_ Sleep...sleep… _

He figures he’s out of luck.

\--

Usually he’s bored by the children’s TV Bra watches but he has little else to do but listen to the annoyingly catchy songs and learn the annoying cloying messages.  Bra clutches her stuffed rabbit and stares intently at the screen with the same fervor that his grandfather does when he watches Capsule Corps’s stock.

“This is asinine,” his father says. “If this were an actual succession, her mother would be a princess and Sofia would be nothing.”

Bra is too entranced to say anything so Trunks figure it’s his job to defend the fictional little girl.

“Big talk for someone who technically should be King.”

“I never had a coronation.”

He’s never sure if his dad is joking or not when it comes to this.  He also never really thinks about the fact that he and Bra are royalty.  Goten calls him a prince sometimes to tease him, when he gets too full of himself.  He’ll bow and say, “Yes, your highness” and Trunks will bop him on the head.

Bra turns from the screen to look at him, eyes big and full of want.

“I want an amulet like Sofia,” she says seriously. “A real one.  Not a toy one.”

“Ask the dragon,” Trunks tells her blithely. “I mean, if we don’t have to bring anyone back to life.”

“We’re probably due.” Once again, he doesn’t know whether or not his father is telling a joke.  He decides to roll with it.

“Has anyone called to check in on Krillin lately?”

Bra makes a frustrated sound.

“But I want it  _ now. _ ”

Not sure how to respond and unable to make a magical amulet appear out of thin air, Trunks points at the screen.

“Look, the rabbit’s singing again.”

Just like that, she’s entranced.  He wonders if he was this easy to distract when he was that age.  She’ll come back to it on the commercial break and he decides to make himself scarce.  There’s fewer things scarier than a super strong four-year-old with a desire for a magic necklace that lets her talk to animals.  It’s very specific but the title of “fewer things scarier” changes so often that he has to keep it fresh.  This one in particular is right up there with “mom when she’s frustrated with a new invention” and “dad when mom tried get to him to do a juice cleanse once.”

He waits until he’s out of the city to fly, truly fly, and his body knows where it’s going before his brain catches up and he’s already almost to Goten’s rock.

He’s there, of course, and he smiles at him for being predictable.  It’s one of the things about him that makes him so damn endearing.  He drops down quietly and suppresses his ki as much as he can.  It’s like they’re kids again, playing.  He draws close and dips his hand into the river and wiggles his fingers to shake the drops loose onto Goten’s forehead.

His eyes snap open and he immediately squints against the sun.

“How did I not hear you come up?”

He grins. “I walk on little cat feet.”

They prattle and then Goten holds his hand out for Trunks to help him up.  The result is instantaneous: Trunks is on his knees, river water getting all over his thirty-thousand zenie shoes.

“Oh, you little shit!”

Goten takes off and he follows.  It’s nice, flying around the mountain like this, free and without worry of someone seeing.  Goten knows the woods better and can evade him but Trunks is still faster.  He grabs his ankle and drags him in to hold his arms above his head.  He yells some of the things Mr. Satan used to say while Goten screams in laughter.  It’s reasons like this that he can’t tell him.  Without knowing the outcome, he doesn’t want to lose this.

\--

One time, a guy had been over, a rare time when he brought someone over just to make out and not to break up with them, and he got a call from Goten.  He had needed help and he’d just gone, left the guy in his room.  Apparently he’d wandered out and found Mai and was thoroughly confused by the sixty-year-old woman in the body of a seventeen-year-old--not that he knew that.  She had given him “advice” which involved horrifically confusing him about Trunks and Other Trunks (as he calls him), saying things like “this one got to calm down from the horror for a little bit to realize he was gay.”  Needless to say, he learned that Mai functioned as an auxiliary plan to break up with a guy if his parents weren’t around.

Not that it was beneficial that night since this guy--as nameless and faceless as many of his hookups, which is probably something he should dwell on a bit more--hadn’t even kissed him yet.

“You should tell Goten,” she says tonight.

He makes a face. “And why is that?”

“Because you’re torturing yourself otherwise.”

She doesn’t get it.  It’s weird that of his friends, he’s probably known her the longest outside of Goten, but it’s also weird that she’s technically older than both of his parents.  The guy had thought she was another sister when he bumped into her and Trunks let him believe that.  She basically is.  In another world, they end up together, as she always brings up as if it gives her some kind of authority in knowing his emotions.  Trunks chooses to ignore it since it opens a can of worms he’d rather leave sealed shut.  He would have liked to think that being gay is a constant along divergent timelines but what does he know?  The science that interests  _ him _ is robotics and bioengineering.  Multiverse theory and time travel?  Not his thing.

“And if I tell him and it makes things weird?  Not worth it.”

“So you stay in this weird gray area?”

“I like the gray area.  I look good in gray.”

Disgusted, Mai gives up and goes off somewhere to find Pilaf and Shu.  He wonders if they still want to take over the world or, after forty years, have opted to give up on it.  Either way, it’s not his problem and if it becomes a problem, it’s one that can easily be stopped.  He figures even Pan and Bra could stop them without any help.

Even so, her words stick with him in an annoying way after the fact.  He’s looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets on his ceiling when he lies awake at night, hearing that “gray area” term bumping around his skull.  Maybe...maybe he can start to let him know.  Drop hints to see if it’s reciprocated but not obvious enough for him to catch on.  He can be sneaky like that.

He rolls over and tries to sleep, assured in his decision--mostly.

\--

Goten’s close enough to him to bump shoulders while they play their racing game.  It gets uglier than this, normally.  No trick is too dirty.  Headlocks, kicks, punches, bites,  _ licks,  _ all’s fair in the pursuit for victory.

This time, Trunks is distracted.  He has to drop hint that aren’t anvils.  He watches Goten’s profile as he maneuvers around a corner.  He’s biting his lip and there’s a tension in his neck.  They take these games remarkably seriously.  Once, after losing, Trunks incinerated his gaming console and had to get a new one.

“I’m not sleeping with him.”

Goten looks confused in that endearing way of his and glances from Trunks to the screen.

“Um...who?”

He sighs.  Sometimes Goten is clueless and usually he finds it cute but this is not conducive to dropping hints.  He bares his teeth and reiterates who he means.  Goten kind of shrugs.

“Oh.  Okay.”

Frustration chokes him and he wishes he had more patience.  How do you simultaneously win and lose the gene lotto?  Smarts, strength, and looks offset by impatience and a short fuse.

“I only sleep with people I like.”

Goten looks at him and he looks--confused, still.  There’s something more, though, something Trunks can’t quite name.  He knows Goten’s array of facial expressions very well.  He wears every single one on his face, clear as day.  This one, though, isn’t as obvious and he feels unfathomably sad.  Like it’ll be more than physical distance between them in a couple months.

“I’m leaving soon.”

The plan has always been that he’ll go to college and, a year later, Goten will join him.  They avoid talking about it otherwise.  That full year apart.

“Yeah…”

He moistens his lips and watches him.  The race ends, won by one of the computer-controlled racers.  They don’t move to start another one.  There’s a buzzing in the air, suddenly, like all of their nerves have been turned up.  Trunks swallows nervously.  Maybe hints aren’t the way to go.

“Goten, I…”

His thoughts catch up to his mouth and he shuts it, thinking better.  No, it isn’t time yet.  Instead, he gives him what he hopes is a convincing smile.

“You hungry?”

Without missing a beat, he says, “Always.”

They walk to the kitchen and he thinks that it isn’t time.  Maybe it never will be.

\--

The radio is blaring in his mother’s lab, an old rock song from when she was a teenager, and she sings along offkey.  Trunks joins in, not even cringing when their voices clash.  No one in his family can carry a tune in a bucket but it never stops them.

When he was a kid, he would pass her wrenches or screwdrivers or whatever else she needed.  Now, he helps her program and fine tune certain inventions.  He knows she’s grooming him to take over Capsule Corps but he doesn’t mind it.  He likes having his future mapped out for him, at least in this regard.  It’s one less pressure on his mind.

“So, mom,” he says and then she’s looking at him in that way that  _ knows _ him and Trunks wonders what it’s like to be a kid who’s able to hide things from their parents.

In many ways, he’s lucky.  They don’t care how much he parties, how late he stays out, or even his grades in school.  They just  _ know _ everything.  Even his dad can bluntly say what he’s thinking before he says it and it gets annoying.  The look his mom is giving him right now means she knows that he’s going to talk about Goten and the fact irritates him.  He sucks on his lower lip before deciding to flip the script.

“Are you and dad ever going to get, like, officially married?”

This catches her off-guard for a second and he suppresses a grin.  Point, Trunks.

“What would that accomplish?” she asks.

His parents have referred to each other as husband and wife for over a decade but they never married.  Truthfully, Trunks doesn’t care.  He just wanted a quick subject change to throw her off.  He shrugs blithely.

“Dunno.  Just thinking.” He tries again. “What if I take a gap year?”

He realizes after he says this that this is a fatal flaw.

“Oh, do you want to start university the same time as Goten?”

He curses himself for setting his own trap and then falling into it.

“I mean, I guess, but mostly I wanted to, uh, travel.”

It sounds silly coming out of his mouth but his brain is already accelerating with that mental image.  He and Goten traveling, flying around the world.  It’s--nice.  No worries.  They can do it when he’s on holiday from school or something.  His thoughts jump further and he’s already talking Goten out of camping and hiking.  Trunks can enjoy a starry night or a quick flight through the woods but he’s thoroughly a city boy.  Goten would be all cute and woodsy and Survival Boy and Trunks would be huddling under his cashmere blanket, firing ki blasts at mosquitos when they get too close.

They used to camp out as kids and Trunks didn’t remember hating it but not now.  He  _ does _ remember when they were in the mountains once and he watched him tending the fire and asked how he could do it.  He figured Gohan taught him but instead he said, “Sometimes I didn’t want to go home because it was too sad so I learned to make campfires.”

“Trunks?”

He’s dragged back to reality and inquisition because his mother is looking at him in that knowing way of hers.

“Whatever you do,” she continues. “I’ll support you.  But whatever you decide, do it sooner rather than later.”

He knows she’s not talking about university.

\--

Goten seems strange when he comes over but, then again, Trunks feels strange, too.  Either way, he agrees to go with him to the party.  He’d gotten an invite earlier that day from--someone.  He feels a bit bad at how poorly he remembers people’s names.  It’s like he graduated and every fact about his classmates just flew out of his head.  Tonight, he thinks about what his mom said and his own thoughts and everything coalesces into a sticky, sludgy mess in his head and he can’t deal.  So he decides he has nothing to lose and the concept of tequila JELL-O shots is too amazingly enticing to pass up.

He’s aware of Goten sitting on one of the chaises, holding an unopened can of beer like it’s a life preserver.  He wants to not think about it, him, them.  So he’s in the pool.  Everything is wavy and hot and he pushes his wet hair back away from his face.  A guy, someone he used to hook up with, comes up and shoves his hand between his legs to pinch him in the ass.  He wants to clench his thighs and break his wrist but he just laughs.  It sounds fake even to himself.

“You’re looking hot tonight,” he says.

“I’m always looking hot,” Trunks says back.

The music is cranked to a pain pitch and the water is shimmering, vibrating with the bass.  Everything is tilted and blurry because of the tequila and he’s glad he feels so out of sync.  He can pretend he’s not ignoring his feelings or ignoring Goten entirely and just.  Be.

But he can’t.

No amount of tequila--barring a lethal amount, which he isn’t willing to try yet--can erase him from his mind.  He’s in his mind, his  _ cells. _  Even if he hadn’t realized his feelings, Goten would be there.  When they were little, they fused so often that sometimes he couldn’t tell whose thoughts were his and which were leftover ones from Goten.  He swims away and hauls himself out of the pool.  Goten’s drinking from the beer now like maybe he doesn’t have anything to lose either.

He sits on the chaise across from him and shakes his hair out like a dog.  Goten yells and tries to fend the spray off with one arm.

“How’s your friend?” he says, lowering it.  Trunks notices that the beer can he’s holding now has a different label, meaning he’s had more than one.

“Lucky I didn’t drown him.” He can’t stop grinning, but that’s the tequila.

Everything is like a cut in a movie (tequila will do that, too), then, and suddenly they’re in the house.  Trunks stole a towel from a closet and has it draped over his shoulders.  It’s cold in the house.  They walk together, sneaking even though the music’s loud and everyone’s trashed.  Another cut and Goten’s on the counter while Trunks rummages through the fridge.  It’s even colder here, naked as he is, but he’s on a mission.  He takes out one of those squares of pressed, orange cheese and closes the fridge.  Goten has another beer in his hand.  There’s something on his face that looks--sad, broken.  He came close, once, to telling him.  When the hints didn’t work.

“Those guys don’t mean shit to me.”

It comes out wrong and his tongue is clumsy, thick.  Goten stares at him, his eyes vacant, and he feels like he’s already lost him.

“You only sleep with guys you like.” His voice, too, his flat and empty.  It’s so very un-Goten.

His mom’s words echo in his head and he has to say something.  The tequila certainly sees to it, at least.

“Yeah.  And I’ve never slept with the guy I love.”

He feeds him a piece of the cheese and Goten eats it, watching him all the while.  If he’s pieced it together, his face betrays nothing.  He wants the usual Goten back.  The open book he’s known his whole life.

“Do you get what I’m saying?”

His own voice sounds foreign and loud to his ears so he puts cheese in his mouth.  While chewing, he bites his lip again, worrying the flesh between his teeth.  Goten’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and he stares at him baldly.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

Instead of flat, his voice now sounds as broken and sad as his face looked earlier.  Trunks releases his lip and swallows the cheese.

“I don’t have to.”

Goten makes a sound that might be a laugh but it’s hard to tell.

“Yes, you do.”

He isn’t getting it.  Trunks shakes his head and swears he can hear the blood rushing around in it.

“I can wait.” It’s out now.  He has to roll with it. “I can take a gap year.  We can travel.”

“We…”

_ Yes.  We. _

He nods and continues on, hearing the words spilling from his lips without much thought.  Everything he’s kept bottled up since he realized his feelings.

“I realized it this afternoon.”

It almost makes him laugh.  That’s Goten, of course.  He should be mad but he’s not.  Even if he was, they’ve never been able to stay mad at each other.  He puts his hands on Goten’s hips.  Goten’s legs go around his waist and pull him closer.  This isn’t really how he pictured their first kiss--if he allowed himself to picture it at all--but he doesn’t mind it.  People bump in and out of the kitchen and pay them no mind.

“I wanna do that again tomorrow when I’m not drunk.” No one can say that Trunks isn’t a master of romance.

\--

They still sleep in separate beds.  Drunk as he is, he doesn’t trust himself to stick to his promise of waiting until he’s sober.  Not when Goten’s so, so kissable.  He also doesn’t want to rush.  He doesn’t want this to be like everything else.  It isn’t tearing clothes off.  This is precious.  He feels bad because it isn’t like those other guys meant  _ nothing _ entirely.  He had feelings for them even if a lot of them were just groin-y feelings that passed within a couple weeks.  He’s not cheesy enough or rosy-eyed enough to think he’d been saving himself emotionally for Goten.  He just knows that he  _ gets _ him, that he can see the whole of him.  He doesn’t have to hide his strength or his powers or anything.  There’s nothing they don’t know about each other.  Nothing they have to keep secret.

Beyond that, beyond that understanding, is that he loves him.  His mind is swirling mush as he lies in his bed with his eyes closed but it keeps coming back to it.  He loves Goten.  The kiss didn’t seal it but knowing his feelings are returned let him admit to himself.  There’s so many little pieces that make up the whole of why he loves him.  The little crease that appears between his eyebrows when he’s puzzling something out.  The way he first looked when he grew his hair out, nervous about looking different as if all the hair grew overnight.  The little beauty mark above his lip and the scar above his eyebrow.  The way he laughs with his whole body, not just his face.

He could never say this out loud, it’s too embarrassing, but he wants to show him.  With luck, he can spend the rest of his life showing him.

Goten’s an early riser and Trunks didn’t sleep so he opens his eyes when he stirs.  He isn’t looking at him yet so that’s when he chooses to strike.  He leaps from the bed and pounces on top of Goten.  He brings his arms above his head and the ki blast he instinctively summoned dissipates to nothing.

“Little kitten feet?”

_ Cat, _ he almost corrects but instead he grins.

“You know it.”

Goten grins back and tilts his face up to kiss him.  At the last second, he pulls away, screwing his face in disgust.

“Dude, your  _ breath. _ ”

He adopts a haughty tone when he says back, “Try smelling yours.”

Walking to the kitchen together and things are--different.  There’s a charge between them, a knowing spark.  Trunks can reach out and hold his hand if he wants to and he  _ wants to, _ but he refrains.

Instead he hauls out food to start cooking.  He isn’t stellar at it but he can fry some eggs and bacon, at least.  He also can follow microwave instructions--which is  _ very _ impressive.  Not that Goten can cook either.  When he was little, either his mother or brother cooked everything and he was told never go near the stove.

While he gets the burners going, Goten plops at the table, propping his chin up in his hands.

“So...are we boyfriends now?”

Trunks considers it, tapping his chin with the spatula.   _ Are they? _  He never thought that far ahead.  Didn’t think of it beyond just getting it Out There.  He says as much and owns up to his shitty way of dealing with emotions.

“I’m not so hot at it either.”

He’d argue that he was.  Goten’s a perceptive guy.  He’s always trying to see the good in people and trying to respond to them as best as he can.  Maybe he’s bogged down by his own shit, just as Trunks is.  He isn’t sure--in fact, it’s probably one of the only things he doesn’t know about Goten.

When he kisses him, he doesn’t want to say that this is their second kiss and Goten was sitting down both times.  He definitely doesn’t want to talk about how Goten, who’s  _ younger _ than him, is  _ taller, _ too.  He’s been teased about it enough since Goten shot up like a bean sprout last year.  This is a time for kissing, not teasing.

“Are you cooking, sweetie?”

He almost jumps back at the sound of his mother’s voice.  Usually none of them are up until later (if his dad is up early, training, it’s usually because he didn’t  _ go _ to sleep, not because he woke up).

“I thought you were sleeping.”

His mom adopts That Look and he knows she’s going to say something he’s going to regret hearing.

“We were in bed but we weren’t sleeping.”

“Mo-om!”

As much as he wants to pretend that his parents have only ever had sex twice (once for him, and once for Bra), he’s been given too much proof otherwise over the years.  Goten’s lucky.  His parents  _ never _ talk about their sex life.  His mom says it fosters a relationship of equals between them (mostly so she can find out about his boyfriends and make sure he’s being safe--she’s transparent like that), but mostly it just makes him retch.

Goten stifles a laugh and he makes his best betrayed face at him.  His mom starts ruffling his hair, giggling all the while.  He wonders if she saw them kissing.

“So, you two finally figured it out?”

That answers that.  Trunks tries to duck out from under her hand just in time to see his dad taking the still sizzling bacon from the frying pan to drop into his mouth.

“Yeah, we--dad, that’s our bacon.”

He gives him his own version of The Look and while it might be intimidating to friend and foe galaxy-wide, Trunks knows that it isn’t as powerful as his mother’s.

“And who paid for it?”

“Uh, mom?”

He turns to give Goten an exasperated look only to see that his mom has made  _ him _ her next victim in hair ruffling.

\--

They’re lying out behind Goten’s house, looking up at the stars.  There’s an energy there, something thrumming between them, and it’s good to acknowledge it.  It’s good to know that he can reach out and take Goten’s hand if he wants to.  He can kiss it, he can kiss  _ him. _

“Do you remember any of the star stuff Gohan told us when we were kids?” Goten asks.

Trunks scoots closer to him so their shoulders and elbows are touching, so their pinkies are aligned, and shrugs.

“Sure I do.  Like that star’s called...Eugene.  And that one’s Leonard.  Give him a wave!”

“You jerk.”

His voice lacks any heat and so Trunks takes this opportunity to wrap his arms around him.

“Okay, then.  How about this?  Pick a star and it’s yours.”

“You’ll buy me a star?” He sounds incredulous.

“You say that like it’s out of the realm of possibility for my family.  I could buy you a  _ planet. _ ”

In the gloom, he sees a small smile twist onto Goten’s face.

“How very Saiyan of you.  Your dad would be proud.”

“Ha.  No, seriously.  We’re dating now.  You get me at my cheesiest for as long as you’ll have me.”

Goten wiggles a bit in his hold but he’s laughing and smiling.

“Good.”

He twists so they can kiss properly and stars twinkle on above them and the future, still spanning out in that endless blue yonder, seems a lot less scary.

**Author's Note:**

> vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
